Friday, August 21, 2009

Been busy running about town, taking care of errands, and catching up with old friends. Last week I finally set up my iSight (it was really very easy; I don't know why I took so long to get around to it) and caught up with friends far and wide - some remotely via Skype, some over the phone, and the old-fashioned way: in person. Angela was visiting from Singapore, so there was dinner with her Friday night and a last-minute baby shower for her on Sunday afternoon:

In the photo, I'm at 33 weeks and she's about 6 weeks behind me. I'm looking forward to when our boys can play with each other.

Saturday was also another checkup - my ninth so far! Check-ups are now going to be 2 weeks apart. From my last visit to this, I haven't gained any weight but the baby has gained an estimated 400g (woo-hoo! I hope that means I've lost 400g! ).

Afterwards, we took a pre-natal class on positioning techniques during birthing. Of all the courses offered by our birth center, I thought this was the most important one and I had to sign up for it two months in advance. Nevertheless, at least the first half was lecture. "When are we going to get some real practice?" I thought to myself. Finally we got to practice, and I was selected as the instructor's demo model, so I got to practice twice.

We learned how to:

use a birth ball: including sitting, squatting, kneeling while leaning forward on it for support (aka fit ball - this I already know how to do from my years at the gym)

sit astride a chair while the hubs applies pressure on various parts of my hips and lower back to release the back muscles and open the pelvis

Lie flat on the floor above a shawl at waist level - the hubs can then stand astride me and hold both ends of the shawl to just slightly lift it (and me!) a centimeter or two above the ground. This was my favorite - it really relieved a lot of lower back pain!

One not-so-cool thing that happened last week was that I got two telemarketing calls from formula companies - on the same day! The first woman actually introduced herself as someone from the prenatal course, so at first I was confused as to why she was speaking in that classic too-fast-I'm-doing-a-sales-pitch tone while being very obscure as to who she exactly was and who she represented. When I could finally get a word in, I politely asked her to take me off their call lists.